13. Sadness

     When Momo returned from the surface, she went straight to her garden and sat there, just staring at her favorite statue. She refused to tell her sisters what had happened. For the longest time, she refused to speak to anyone. She was engulfed in a deep and terrible sadness. 
     For days, she spent many long hours sitting in her garden, tortured by some unspoken sadness. She no longer tended her garden, and her plants grew in a tangled mess. 
     It especially saddened Momo’s sisters to see her embracing the statue in her garden as if it were a real boy—as if her heart would burst at the thought of loving and losing him.  
     From time to time, she swam to the surface and sat on a rock. For the longest time, she would silently and sadly face the land. 

       One such time, Momo had a visitor. It was a fiddler crab that thought of herself as an entertainer. This crab, whose professional name was Lolita Detritivore, tried to cheer     Momo up by singing and dancing for her. Lolita sang that, no matter what’s bothering you, you can put on a happy face and sing your way out of any troubles that come your way. Poor Momo! In her unhappy frame of mind, the last thing in the world she needed was a crustacean that danced and sang nonsense. 
     Mercifully, Zora the Helpful Seagull swooped down, seized Lolita Detritivore in her talons, and flew away to feed Lolita to her young seagulls. As Lolita screamed and wiggled for dear life, Momo muttered half to herself, “Sing your way out of that one, you little creep.” Feeling somewhat uplifted by this experience, Momo turned and swam back to the undersea kingdom.     
     At length, Momo’s oldest sister N’Shal could bear it no longer. “You’ve always trusted me,” N’Shal pleaded, “and you’ve always confided in me. Whatever it is, I'm sure we can work it out together." 

      Momo stammered out a few words at first. As the first few words broke through the crack in her defenses, a torrent of words gushed from her. She told N’Shal everything that had happened.